Albany 2009: The 16th Conversation will be held in June 16-20 2009 at the State Univ. of New York at Albany. The Keynote evening lecture will be delivered by Nobel Laureate Andrew Fire, Stanford Univ. on RNA interference and nucleic acid structures associated with gene silencing. The Conversation will cover the following areas of structural biology: Alternative Splicing, Disordered Proteins and Embryonic Stem Cells;Genomics: System Biology and Networks;Chromatin and Epigenetics;RNA: Silencing of the Genome;RNA: Ribosome and Control of Protein Synthesis;RNA: Catalysis, Folding and Interactions;RNA: Structural Informatics;Repeats: Selfish DNA and Toxic RNA -Human Diseases;Protein-DNA, DNA-DNA, Protein- Protein Contacts and Gene Regulation;Proteins: Allostery, Network Communications and Design;Single Molecules Visualization at the Level of Cellular Processes;Innovation: Structure of Transients to Synthetic Biology;Ned Seeman's DNA Nanotechnology Session;Macromolecular complexes: cryo-electron microscopy &tomography. In addition a satellite workshop on Nucleosome Positioning will be held immediately following the Conversation. The subjects will be covered by invited lectures and poster discussion papers. There will be a total of 80 lectures, 56 by senior scientists and 24 by young researchers. Lectures by young researchers (graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and starting faculty) will be based on selection from abstracts submitted for poster presentation. 5.5 hours of the symposium time will be left vacant until abstracts for posters are received so that a significant number of lectures can be selected from the abstracts. The number of posters presented will be over 200. Out of a total of 80 talks, a minimum of 30 will be delivered by female scientists. The program will admit some 400 scientists from over 20 Nations. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Several of the sessions, such as Repeats: Selfish DNA and Toxic RNA -Human Diseases;Alternative Splicing, Disordered Proteins and Embryonic Stem Cells;Chromatin and Epigenetics;Protein-DNA, DNA-DNA, Protein-Protein Contacts and Gene Regulation;and Single Molecules Visualization at the Level of Cellular Processes deal directly with molecular diseases, and how one devises approaches to cure and manage them. The remaining topics look at advances in fundamental areas of medical biochemistry, and progress here will have profound impact on the way we will manage disease, including aging and cancer, in the future.